Well I'd disagree to a certain extent. UNIX is pretty conservative about these things. That's why it's still fundementally the same OS it was 35 years ago.

As the author of the original article points out, when globbing was implemented as part of the shell it was a good idea. These days, perhaps it isn't. Maybe things could be made more flexible if globing wasn't built into the shell.

As it happens, this is one of those things that just can't change. It's baked right into the design. Not performing globing before passing the arguments to the executable would break pretty much everything; applications would need to be re-written to perform the globing themselves and expand the raw shell arguments, and that clearly isn't going to happen.

What's been really amazing is that a simple reply to make the simple point that perhaps a design decision made over 30 years may not be the best design today has erupted into a long thread about the merits of globing, something that I happen to care very little about in the grand scheme of UNIX design. Even if I don't think it's much of a problem, it's amazing to see that many people arn't even willing to consider the possibility that it could be done better today.

As the author of the original article points out, when globbing was implemented as part of the shell it was a good idea. These days, perhaps it isn't. Maybe things could be made more flexible if globing wasn't built into the shell

So the article is based on shaky grounds ? The author based all this rant on supposition ? Well, it reads like a troll.

As it happens, this is one of those things that just can't change. It's baked right into the design. Not performing globing before passing the arguments to the executable would break pretty much everything

Did you hear about quotes ? There's no need to remove the globing from the shell, there are already mechanisms preventing the shell from parsing the arguments
And it doesn't break anything if you quote the arguments. So I still fail to see where the problem could be in the design.

What's been really amazing is that a simple reply to make the simple point that perhaps a design decision made over 30 years may not be the best design today

Everybody can say "perhaps sth is not the best". It stays an empty discussion until you bring something to support your claim.

Even if I don't think it's much of a problem, it's amazing to see that many people arn't even willing to consider the possibility that it could be done better today

And I find amazing that some people, out of boredom, make some troll based on empty discussions, searching for problems where there are none.
That's not how you do things better. You have to find issues first, then try to solve them, proposing sth.
As with using the shell for all these years, I still fail to see any issues with its design : I don't even master it yet, and can do very powerful things already (things like some used on production servers). Companies invent big GUI programs to do a little of what the shell can do in one line.